KNOWING DON BOSCO

PASCUAL CHÁVEZ VILLANUEVA

«At St Francis of Assisi, I was already conscious of the need for some kind of school. Some children who are already advanced in years are still completely ignorant of the truths of the faith. For these, verbal instruction would prove long and mostly tedious. They quickly would stop coming. We did try to give them some lessons, but we were beaten by lack of space and of teachers ready to help us. At the Refuge and later at the Moretta house, we started a regular Sunday school, and when we came to Valdocco we also started a regular night school. As we wanted to get some good result, we took just one subject at a time. For example, one or two Sundays were devoted to going over and over the alphabet and the structure of syllables. Then we started right off on the small catechism and, syllable by syllable, pupils were taught to read one or two of the first catechism questions. That served as a lesson for the week. The following Sunday that work was reviewed and a few more questions and answers were added. In this way in about eight weeks I could succeed in getting some to read and study on their own a whole page of catechism» (Memoirs of the Oratory, 281).

The Salesian threesome

A playground, a church, a school: the three essentials for a Salesian house were there and effective right from the start.

The experience of the “house attached to the Oratory of Saint Francis of Sales” changed the Festive Oratory in the Roman style (Saint Philip Neri) and the Lombardy style (Saint Charles Borromeo), from which Don Bosco drew his inspiration, into a educational format much more complex and organised, in which pastoral and catechistical activity, integrated with various games and artistic expression, is given its full scope by the support of an all-round formation, composed of moral and civic education, instruction, vocational training, acceptance and generous encouragement, the experience of a community life that involves everyone, with a social and missionary outreach. What emerged from all this was a completely new model of a Christian educational community and setting, adapted to the needs of the times and to the new kinds of young people; one that was capable of being successfully introduced into the most diverse geographical cultural locations, in the great cities or in small centres.

But the Salesian charism which finds its origin and its paradigm (cf. Memoirs of the Oratory), in the Festive Oratory, in fact was able to expand throughout the whole world and bear such educational and formative fruits as to make a profound impact on society and in the Church, thanks to its being happily grafted onto the traditional Catholic college and/or school to which it gives a new breath of life, and thanks also to the arts and trades and technical schools, all following the methods of Don Bosco.

The indispensable paradigm

The Festive Oratory always remains the activity closest to Don Bosco’s heart, the freshest and the most dynamic of his institutions, that most appreciated by the ordinary people and according to the tastes of the young. In order to maintain their vivacity and pedagogical inspiration, all the other Salesian works have always had to take as their model that original experience which is the secret of their vitality.

The Oratory was their inspiration especially when it came to the ones to whom they gave priority (the children of the ordinary people); the type of educational relationship that was aimed at winning trust; the spirituality and the zeal which would sustain the educator (who should not only be a good professional teacher and tutor); in cultivating the playground as an educational meeting place; to the predominantly “festive” and recreational atmosphere, in harmony with the religious, formative and vocational.

The popular nature of the Oratory, with a preference for the poorer youngsters and those “at risk,” combined with its missionary and social vocation (if possible reaching all the young people in an area, attracting and winning them over in order to “transform them”), is its characteristic feature both with regard to parish oratories and to all types of recreation centres. Always this presumes the presence of a Salesian community as its beating heart, and the co-involvement of co-workers, well-organised at all levels, of prevalently young helpers (as teachers, assistants, catechists, “recreation and sports organisers”… or “animators”). This is always the model, the touchstone, the essential stimulus for the Salesians in colleges, technical schools, on the missions and in the parishes.

Conquering the world

With the founding of the Salesian Society (a family of consecrated persons dedicated to the Christian education of youth), the charism of the Oratory was able to expand and to be expressed in educational and pastoral contexts quite different from those of the original Festive Oratory. This effort to rethink and translate into practical terms was not always fully successful, but basically it led to a fruitful ongoing process. It is sufficient to realise that the “preventive system” in the form Don Bosco expressed it in 1877 is a conscious attempt to recreate the oratorian educational model in terms of a traditional “boarding school.”

In fact, the successive repetitions of the Valdocco experience between 1846 and 1861 (the year the house in Mirabello was opened with Don Rua as the Rector) become an effective, fruitful and providential stimulus, giving the charism the opportunity to express and strengthen itself, and to acquire what it needed for its diffusion throughout the world. In addition to Don Bosco, the young Don Rua was the guiding force behind this transformation of the oratory model into the college context, a transformation which will continue for the whole period in which he is Rector, with the effort to blend together fidelity to the origins and an openness to the promptings of the Spirit and the demands of the new times.

In his “chronicle” Fr Ruffino writes quite simply: « At Mirabello Fr. Rua resembles Don Bosco in Turin. He is surrounded by boys who are drawn by his kindness and pleasant conversation » (BM VII, 329).

In his sons, Don Bosco basically exported himself.